Dynamic media rendering

ABSTRACT

Media may be dynamically rendered by receiving signals from one or more types of sensors sensing in an area, and obtaining from the signals information about one or more locations of furniture, or one or more locations of persons or heads or ears thereof, or identities of one or more persons in common with other data such as time of day, season, or other external metadata. Audio and/or video data may be rendered based on the locations or identities. The identity of a person can be automatically obtained and used to automatically select a rendering profile which is then used to render digital audio and/or video media. A dynamically changing spatial location of a head and/or or ears may be automatically determined and how an audio stream is rendered may be dynamically changed based on the spatial location.

BACKGROUND

Multi-channel audio and digital theatre in general is becoming morecommon. Digital media is more frequently being presented in places wheremany different viewers or listeners may come and go, where viewers andlisteners move around, or where theatre or room configurationsfrequently change.

FIG. 1 shows a system 50 rendering audio/video media in an area 52. Area52 may be a room, a region in a room, a home or public theatre, and soon. System 50 may be a computer, a set-top box, a satellite receiver, agaming device, a personal video recorder, a DVD player, or any othertype of device that renders, displays, projects, or transmits audioand/or video data. System 50 may receive audio/video data over a network54, or it may play audio/video data from a local storage unit 56. Theaudio/video data may be in a format such as MPEG-2 format, WMV, orWMV-HD, or any other form of stored, streaming, or broadcast media.

Media devices may render media in a variety of ways. For example, system50 has a splitter 58 that parses or splits audio/video content into twostreams; a compressed video stream and an audio stream. A videodecompressor 60 decompresses the video stream and passes it to a videorenderer 62 that generates frames to display on display 64. An audioplayback device or module 66 generates an audio signal played byspeakers 68. Playback module 66 and video renderer 62 may be devicessuch as video cards, audio cards, or other forms of hardware. They mayalso be realized with software. Plug-ins 70 can be included to provideadded or necessary media rendering functionality. Spatial or temporalvideo filters and audio special effects filters are examples ofrendering plug-ins.

Of interest in FIG. 1 is ‘audio sweet’ spot 72. An audio sweet spot is aregion or position within a listening area where the audio content willhave the highest quality, that is, where the audio will have the optimalsound or where the audio will most realistically and accuratelyreproduce the effect, image or spatial data that is implied or intendedfrom the author of source of the audio content. Due to the physics ofunprocessed audio propagation in air, which is dependent upon thefrequency content and phase relationships of the source material, mostaudio rendering systems have an audio ‘sweet spot’ where the projectionsof speakers intersect. For example, in a stereo system with twospeakers, the sweet spot is centered where the speakers' axes ofprojection (an axis perpendicular to the face of a speaker) intersect.The sweet spot occurs similarly in 5.1 sound systems, 7.1 sound systems,and other surround sound systems. Different systems may have differentaudio sweet spot sizes and locations, and the definition of a sweet spotmay be somewhat subjective, however most audio production systems have asweet spot and a listener's experience may depend on their locationrelative thereto.

The dynamic nature of an audience or a listening area can present someproblems when rendering sound or video. As shown in FIG. 1, differentpersons may enter or leave area 52. Persons may move around from onechair to another. Furniture may move from one location to another.However, the audio or video will not intelligently and dynamicallyadjust itself to the listener's or viewer's new position, perhaps due tolack of sensing or detection equipment or mechanisms or limitationsthereof. Persons and/or furniture may be relocated outside the audiosweet-spot of nearby stationary speakers.

As different people enter or leave a media presentation area such asarea 52, the people may in turn have to adjust audio and/or videovolume, intensity, balance, equalization, or other digital signalprocessing settings on the rendering device(s) to match their ownpersonal preferences or the limitations of their senses. For example,one person may enter a home theatre and tune the hue of the display orprojector. If that person leaves and another person enters, that personmay need to readjust the audio and/or video settings to match their ownphysiology and perception. As another example, a person with sensitivehearing may enter a video presentation exhibit at a museum and may haveto adjust the volume of the exhibit to avoid discomfort.

In sum, audio and/or video output has been statically presented and hasnot often been optimized dynamically to take into account observablereal-world conditions and occurrences.

SUMMARY

This Summary is included only to introduce some concepts discussed inthe Detailed Description below. This Summary is not comprehensive and isnot intended to delineate the scope of protectable subject matter.

Media may be dynamically rendered by receiving signals from one or moretypes of sensors sensing in an area, and obtaining from the signalsinformation about one or more locations of furniture, or one or morelocations of persons or heads or ears thereof, or identities of one ormore persons. Audio and/or video data may be rendered based on thelocations or identities. The identity of a person can be automaticallyobtained and used to automatically select a rendering profile which isthen used to render digital audio and/or video media. A dynamicallychanging spatial location of a head, heads and/or or ears may beautomatically determined and how an audio stream is rendered may bedynamically changed based on knowledge of the spatial location.

Many of the attendant features will be more readily appreciated byreferring to the following detailed description considered in connectionwith the accompanying drawings.

DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

FIG. 1 shows a system rendering audio/video media in an area.

FIG. 2 shows a system for rendering audio and/or video data based onfeedback or observations of multiple sensors.

FIG. 3 shows a process for location-sensitive audio rendering.

FIG. 4 shows a process for rendering audio and/or video according to auser profile.

FIG. 5 shows an example of a rendering profile database or table.

FIG. 6 shows a process for rendering audio based on furniture locationinformation.

FIG. 7 shows how furniture locations may be gathered, stored, and usedfor rendering.

FIG. 8 shows an embodiment for rendering audio.

FIGS. 9 and 10 show rendering media according to head and/or earlocations.

Like reference numerals are used to designate like parts in theaccompanying Drawings.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

Multi-Sensor Driven Rendering

FIG. 2 shows a system for rendering audio and/or video data based onfeedback or observations of multiple sensors. A person 90 is listeningto audio from speakers 92 and/or viewing video from a display orprojector 94. The speakers 92 and projector 94 output audio and videoprovided by a media rendering device 96, such as a software mediaplayer, a set-top box, a general-purpose media device, a gaming device,a DVD player, etc. Rendering device 96 has an audio rendering subsystem98 and a video rendering subsystem 100. The media rendering device 96may have components somewhat similar to system 50 in FIG. 1. However,rendering device 96 receives area information from a position detectionmechanism 102.

The position detection mechanism 102 may be separate from orincorporated within the media rendering device 96 (or possiblyincorporated in the speakers 92 and/or display or projector 94) and hasa digital signal processor and integrator 104 and an area or locationinformation generator 106. The signal integrator 104 receives signalsfrom a variety of different types of sensors such as a video camera 108,a microphone array 110, an infrared sensor 112, or even future types ofdevices 114. Other devices not shown may also be used. For example,stereoscopic cameras, high frequency audio detectors, radio frequencyidentifier (RFID) tag sensors, motion sensors, triangulated soundsensors, heat or pressure sensors in furniture where people sit, can allprovide information about the locations of people and/or furniture. Inthe case of sound sensors such as microphones, a baseline signal akin toa test pattern may be emitted and its signature in an unoccupied areacaptured by microphone for later use in detecting locations of personsand/or objects.

Two or more different types of sensors are desirable for severalreasons. Combining sensors can increase measurement accuracy. Forexample, a video camera signal may be supplemented with a microphonesignal. Using the signals of different types of sensors generallyinvolves digital signal processing. Combining sensor types for improvedacuity is known and details for implementing the same may be readilyfound elsewhere. For example, see “Person Tracking Using Audio-VideoSensor Fusion”, by Neal Checka and Kevin Wilson, MIT. See also“Audio-Video Sensor Fusion with Probabilistic Graphical Models”, byMatthew J. Beal, Hagai Attias, and Nebojsa Jojic, Microsoft Research.There may be cases where a single physical sensor is used in multiple‘modes’ to simulate multiple sensors, even though only one device isbeing used to do multiple measurements. For example a speaker may beused to emit high frequency signals in multiple bands over multipleiterative passes with different source content that may help refine moreexact location information than if a single measurement technique hadbeen used.

Use of different types of sensors is also advantageous because multipletypes of sensors make it possible to sense object locations underdifferent conditions. For example, a room darkened for viewing may nothave sufficient light for video camera 108, whereas microphone array110, although possibly less accurate, may nonetheless have sufficientacuity for rough object placement. A room may become noisy withdiscussion or certain audio sequences which may cause audio detection tobecome inaccurate. Audio and video sensors are also useful for providingdifferent types of area information.

In sum, the system in FIG. 2 has different types of sensors 108, 110,112, 114, etc. The system has a position detection mechanism that canoutput positional information, in particular the location of furnitureand/or persons (or heads or ears) such as subject 90, based on theoutputs of the sensors 108, 110, 112, 114. The system has audio andvideo renderers 98, 100, which can render audio and/or video accordingto the positional information. Thus, the system is capable ofdynamically changing the way it renders media based on the changinglocations of objects within the area where video is displayed or audiois played. More specifically, audio can be rendered such that audiosweet spot 116 moves or resizes according to where the listeners are.Video also can be rendered according to user locations. For example, thesize of a video display area, whether projected or otherwise, can beadjusted according to where people are located. For example, if a vieweris close to a screen the display area may be reduced, or if most viewersare distant from a screen or display, the display area can be increased,perhaps with some compromise in quality, to provide a better averageview.

The system may also have a user profile database or table 117 of userprofiles indicating individual rendering preferences. Profile databaseor table 117 is discussed later with reference to FIGS. 4 and 5.Although for this embodiment multiple sensors are desirable, otherembodiments discussed herein do not require multiple sensors or multipletypes of sensors.

FIG. 3 shows a process for location-sensitive audio rendering. Theprocess in FIG. 3 may be performed with a system as shown in FIG. 2. Atthe beginning of a sensing/rendering loop, signals are received 130 byposition detection mechanism 102, which integrates or fuses the signalsto determine 132 the location or position of any person(s) in thesensing field. In the meantime audio data is received 133 for rendering.The received 133 audio signal is rendered 134 such that its sweet spotfalls on or corresponds to the determined 132 listener locations. Thereceiving 130 of sensor signals and determining 132 locations isrepeated as needed and location information is passed to the rendering134 stage. The rendering 134 of audio data and receiving 133 new audiodata is repeated.

Note that the 130-132 sensing loop and the 133-134 rendering loop neednot be synchronized and need not occur on a 1-to-1 basis. For instance,the 130-132 sensing loop may occur every 1 second, or every 60 seconds,or every 10 minutes, or on demand, or as triggered by a person, whereasthe 133-134 rendering loop will repeat frequently enough to reproducesound while rendering 134 based on the last known object or personlocations. As a consequence of the sensory feedback in steps 130 to 134,if a person in the sensing field moves, the multi-sensor determined 132location changes to reflect the movement of that person.

Techniques for rendering 134 to control the audio sweet spot are knownand detailed explanation thereof may readily be found from varioussources. Generally, though, a digital signal processing (DSP) algorithmchanges the phase and amplitude components of the received 133 audiosignal so as to optimize the audio rendering for the specificlocation(s) of the listener(s). Phase and amplitude components of theoriginal audio source are optimized for a specific locale using known orfuture algorithms that, for example, alter the perceived coherence andfrequency of the audio stream being rendered. The locations of walls,furniture, or other sound-reflecting structure can also be taken intoaccount to steer and improve the accuracy and quality of the sweet spot.If multiple persons are detected, specialized DSP algorithms can beapplied to widen the range of the sweet spot so that the overallfrequency spread is increased to cover a wider listening area, whichwill lower the quality at individual locations but will increase theoverall average quality over a wider area. Variations targeted to head,ear, and/or furniture locations are discussed later.

A media framework such as DirectShow can be used to facilitatecustomized audio and video rendering. DirectShow is a media-streamingarchitecture for the Microsoft Windows platform that enableshigh-quality playback of multimedia streams. Streams can contain videoand audio data compressed in a variety of formats, including MPEG, AVI,MPEG-1 Layer 3 (MP3), and WAV. Furthermore, DirectShow automaticallyuses any available video or audio acceleration hardware. With DirectShowit is possible to perform basic playback and format conversion while atthe same time providing access to stream control architecture to allowcustomization. DirectShow components or “filters” (similar to plug-ins70) can be added to support rendering effects discussed herein.Applications such as DVD players and MP3 players can be written usingDirectShow. DirectShow also provides media parameters—APIs that supportrun-time changes to an object's properties. This can be used toimplement user profile rendering parameters as discussed later. Otherframeworks may be used, such as Media Foundation, also by Microsoft.

Several techniques may be used to determine 132 locations. A firsttechnique 132 a is to determine 136 an estimated rough location from acoarse sensor such as an infrared sensor. Then, a person's location isdetermined 138 by searching or processing the estimated location of thesignal of a sensor with greater acuity. Alternatively, technique 132 bmay be used, which involves determining 140 a first estimated locationfrom a first sensor, determining 142 a second estimated location from asecond sensor, and then combining 144 the estimated locations. Combining144 may be done using weighted averages, probabilistic analysis, etc.Other techniques may be used.

A process similar to that shown in FIG. 3 can be used to dynamicallyalter the rendering of video data according to last known or currentpositions of objects or persons. Video rather than audio data isreceived and rendered. A number of known or future techniques may beused to change the brightness (e.g., reduce when viewer is close todisplay), the resolution (reduce when viewer is distant), power savings(blank the screen when viewers are not present), the display size, suchas basic resealing, aperture adjustment, or even automatic rearranginglenses using a zoom signal via RS-232, USB, wireless, etc.

Rendering Profiles

There can be problems when rendering media in public areas or otherplaces where different users are expected to enter and exit an area overtime. The following embodiment dynamically adjusts how audio or video isrendered so that users don't have to continually readjust renderingsettings. If one person enters an area settings may be dynamicallyadjusted to suit the particular user. If that person leaves or anotherenters, further adjustments are automatically made. As discussed below,these adjustments can be made by storing rendering profiles in theprofile database or table 117 and loading the profiles as needed.

FIG. 4 shows a process for rendering audio and/or video according to auser profile. In this embodiment, the identities of one or more personsare used to drive media rendering. A rendering system, perhaps with onlyone sensor or one sensor type, receives 160 signal(s) from one or moresensors sensing objects or people in a sensing field. Using any numberof known techniques such as face recognition, voice recognition, RFIDtags, or a combination thereof, the identity of a person is determined162. A profile associated with that identified person is then selected164. The selected 164 profile is then used to render 166 audio and/orvideo.

FIG. 5 shows an example of the rendering profile database or table 117.Various user identities have associated with them audio and/or videoparameters or settings. An example of an audio profile 180 is shown inFIG. 5. The types of settings are not limited to those shown; anyparameter affecting sound quality can be used, such as volume orloudness or special audio effects. An example of a video profile 182 isalso shown in FIG. 5. Again, the parameters shown are only examples andany video rendering parameter may be stored in video profile 182. Forexample, a parental control parameter may be used to shield childrenfrom inappropriate video or audio content. It may also be useful toindicate a preferred viewing aspect ratio, such as 16:9 or 4:3, etc.Note that different users may be associated with a same profile.

When multiple persons are in a media presentation or projection area itmay be desirable to implement a mechanism for profile conflictresolution. A priority-based selection mechanism may be used where ifmultiple persons are present the profile of a person with a higherpriority is used. Priority may be more granular where differentparameters have different priorities, thus allowing one person tooverride volume, for example, without changing other settings. Ablending strategy may be used where profile parameters are combined oraveraged. Or, the profile of the first entrant may be used until thatperson leaves the area. In addition, the profiles may be selected andstored in order of first come, first serve, stored sequentially. Or, thelist of all profiles that have ever been used may be stored, thenrecalled in a list or selection mechanism so that users may select whichprofile they wish to apply to the presentation space in a way that isassociated either with the person who created the profile, or some otherattribute used to define the settings such as “afternoon settings”versus “evening settings” where the evening settings may be set withlower overall volume and higher audio “brightness” so that sound may notdisturb others sleeping in another room near the projection area (forexample.)

If there is a profile or parameter swap a smooth or gradual transitionbetween parameter values will avoid abrupt audio or video changes. Forexample, if a current profile has a loudness setting of 5/10 and a newprofile has a loudness setting of 2/10, then the loudness is graduallylowered from 5/10 to 2/10 when the new profile is swapped in. If thereis a change in contrast, the contrast can be gradually changed or sweptfrom one contrast setting to another. So users do not think that thereis a problem, it may be desirable to play or display a message to theeffect that settings are being automatically changed.

Different Locational Bases

User locations discussed above may be determined using a number ofdifferent bases. Any combination of head location, ear location, and/orfurniture location may be used to drive the parameters that control, forexample the quality, equalization, spatialization, brightness, or otherattributes of the audio or video rendering.

FIG. 6 shows a process for rendering audio based on furniture locationinformation. Information about the locations of furniture is obtained200 using one or more sensors as discussed above. The furniture locationinformation is then stored and used as supplementary input whendetermining 132 the location of persons, as in FIG. 3. Morespecifically, when determining 132 the location of persons the sensingand rendering system analyzes sensory information constrained to orconditioned by the furniture information to determine which furniture isoccupied. The audio is then rendered 204 such that the audio sweet spotcovers the occupied furniture. By using a furniture-based setting, theroom may be said to be optimized for the full potential range ofaudience that could occupy the seats in the room. While this may be lessadvantageous for any single person in one seat in the room, the overallaverage quality level for every seat in the room is optimized.

In another embodiment, the furniture locations may be the primary basesfor locating the audio sweet spot. The audio sweet spot may be renderedto tightly cover most or all furniture locations regardless of whetherthe furniture is actually occupied.

FIG. 7 shows how furniture locations may be gathered, stored, and usedfor rendering. In the example arrangement shown in FIG. 7 there are 3pieces of furniture 220, 222, and 224. A sensor such as camera 226captures an image of area or room 228. The image is fed to positiondetection mechanism 102, which analyzes the image and outputs thefurniture locations to a storage such as file 230. The pieces offurniture 220, 222, and 224 have positions of (x1, y1), (x2, y2), and(x3, y3), respectively. The rendering module or device 96 then uses thepositions stored in file 230 to render audio and/or video according tothe positions. In FIG. 7, audio for a speaker 231 is rendered such thatits optimal sound area 232 covers the locations of the furniture 220,222, and 224.

In another embodiment, the furniture itself may indicate to the systemwhether it is occupied by using pressure sensors much like those used inautomobile seats to indicate whether a seat is occupied. Preferablyfurniture will report occupancy using radio transmission e.g., viablue-tooth or some other wireless protocol, however the specificmechanism for transmitting data back to the central intelligentrendering device for processing is not important. The renderer 96 thenuses the stored furniture locations and occupancy information tooptimize the rendering. Referring to FIG. 7, the renderer 96 may receiveinformation indicating that only furniture 222 is occupied and thennarrow the rendering of audio for speaker 230 so that the optimal area232 covers the location of furniture 222. If a person sits in furniture220 then the renderer 96 will adjust and render the optimal area 232 tocover furniture 222 and 220.

As discussed above, video may be dynamically rendered in a mannersimilar to audio rendering discussed above. The dynamic information thatdrives the video rendering is essentially the same as in the case ofaudio rendering, but video is dynamically rendered in a way thatoptimizes video the signal for the given room setting rather than audio.

FIG. 8 shows an embodiment for rendering audio. In FIG. 8, an infraredsensor 240 senses the locations of persons in a theatre-like setting.Other sensing means may be used. The infrared sensor 240 may have a lowlocational acuity. Therefore, the information provided by the infraredsensor 240 is supplemented with predetermined information aboutlocations of seats 242. Seat location information may be entered by handor may come from a layout template associated with the theatre. The seatlocations and the infrared signal are both used to determine which seatsor locations have occupants 244. Audio is rendered such that speakers246 produce a sweet spot 248 that covers occupied seats 242.

Embodiments discussed above key on locations of persons and/orfurniture. However, it may be desirable for rendering to key on actualhead and/or ear locations, particularly for highly fidelity audiosystems. Furthermore, human hearing is very sensitive to the differencein time that it takes for sound to reach one ear versus the other ear.In systems where multiple microphones are used to capture sound foraccurate reproduction, sound is reproduced to mimic the timing of soundarrival at the ears. By detecting the locations of ears it is possibleto more accurately reproduce original ear timings. Whether suchreproduction is possible or not, ear locations can provide a finer sweetspot. Some high fidelity audio systems have extremely narrow sweetspots. By rendering to ear locations the listener is more likely toenjoy the benefit of the audio sweet spot. The same reasoning applies tohead locations.

FIG. 9 shows a process for rendering media according to head and/or earlocations. Signals are received 260 from a stereoscopic camera or one ormore cameras. Known image processing algorithms are used to extract ordetermine 262 ear locations. Locations of ears, including obscured ears,can be determined 262 by triangulating using other points of referencesuch as the location of a visible ear, a nose location, a chin location,an eye location, etc. General or coarse detection such as sound orinfrared may locate the general position of a person. This informationcan be used to optimize a search for head orientations. Algorithmsdesigned for facial recognition can be used to detect 3D ear locations.The ear locations are used to optimize rendering 264 of the audio suchthat the sweet spot covers the ears or the sound reaches the ears with atiming that matches the originally captured sound that is beingreproduced. The same process may be used with head locations.

FIG. 10 shows audio rendering based on ear and/or head locations.Cameras 280 (or a single stereoscopic camera) capture an image ofpersons 282. The images are processed to determine the locations of thevarious ears 283 in the area. The ear locations are used byanalyzer/renderer 102/96 to render audio through speakers 284 so thatthe audio sweet spot 286 is as small as possible yet it covers the earsof the persons 282 listening to the thus rendered audio.

In another embodiment, face recognition algorithms can be used tocategorize the expressions on a person's face. The audio source can beselected accordingly. For example, the system can see a person's face,analyze it, determine that the person is angry, surprised, worried,happy, etc., and select specific media content or rendering attributespre-associated with the detected state, mood, or emotion.

SUMMARY

The discussion above relates to various aspects of detecting changingobjects and dynamically rendering media based thereon. It will beappreciated to ordinary artisans that variations of the ideas describedabove may fall within the ambit of the claims below.

Regarding implementation of ideas described above, those skilled in theart will realize that storage devices utilized to store programinstructions can be distributed across a network. For example a remotecomputer may store an example of the process described as software. Alocal or terminal computer may access the remote computer and download apart or all of the software to run the program. Alternatively the localcomputer may download pieces of the software as needed, ordistributively process by executing some software instructions at thelocal terminal and some at the remote computer (or computer network).Those skilled in the art will also realize that by utilizingconventional techniques known to those skilled in the art that all, or aportion of the software instructions may be carried out by a dedicatedcircuit, such as a DSP, programmable logic array, or the like.Furthermore, those skilled in the art will also appreciate that nofurther explanation is needed for embodiments discussed to beimplemented on devices other than computers. Devices such as appliances,televisions, portable media players, or any device for playing sound ordisplaying video can be readily designed with features described above.

All of the embodiments and features discussed above can be realized inthe form of information stored in volatile or non-volatile computerreadable medium. This is deemed to include at least media such asCD-ROM, magnetic media, flash ROM, etc., storing machine executableinstructions, or source code, or any other information that can be usedto enable a computing device to perform the various embodiments. This isalso deemed to include at least volatile memory such as RAM storinginformation such as CPU instructions during execution of a programcarrying out an embodiment.

Those skilled in the art will also realize that a variety of well-knowntypes of computing systems, networks, and hardware devices, such asworkstations, personal computers, PDAs, mobile devices, embeddedprocessor-based devices, embedded computing devices, portablecommunications devices, and so on, may be used to implement embodimentsdiscussed herein. Such systems and their typical components includingCPUs, memory, storage devices, network interfaces, operating systems,application programs, etc. are well known and detailed descriptionthereof is unnecessary and omitted.

1. A method of dynamically rendering media with a device, the methodcomprising: receiving or sampling signals from one or more sensorssensing in an area; processing the signals to determine that objects inthe area are pieces of furniture, and to obtain locations of the piecesof furniture, wherein the locations of the pieces of furniture aredetermined by sensing the pieces of furniture independent of whetherthey are occupied; and using an audio rendering process, which allowssteering of an audio sweet spot in the area, to render audio data basedon the locations of the pieces of furniture, wherein the audio sweetspot is steered to cover an area defined by one or more of the obtainedlocations of the pieces of the furniture determined to be occupied, thesteering comprising repeatedly: automatically determining which of thepieces of furniture are currently occupied and automatically adaptingthe sweet spot to include an area defined by the locations of theoccupied pieces of furniture.
 2. A method according to claim 1, whereinthe signals are received from at least a microphone array and a camera.3. A method according to claim 1, wherein a signal from one sensor isused to refine a search of a signal from another sensor.
 4. A methodaccording to claim 1, further comprising combining profiles of twoidentified persons, respectively, and using the combination of theprofiles to perform the video and audio rendering, the combiningcomprising selecting rendering parameters from a first profile,selecting rendering parameters from a second profile, and forming athird profile with the selected parameters.
 5. A method according toclaim 4, wherein the combination of the profiles comprises a pluralityof rendering parameters, values of which are provided from both of theuser profiles.
 6. A method of dynamically rendering an audio stream, themethod comprising: in an environment having a plurality of pieces offurniture, automatically determining that objects in the environment arepieces of furniture, automatically determining locations of the piecesof furniture, and repeatedly automatically determining which pieces offurniture are currently occupied and which pieces are currentlyunoccupied; and rendering the audio stream to cause a sweet spot of therendered audio stream to dynamically adapt to fit the locations of thepieces of furniture determined to be currently occupied, and during therendering, when an occupancy/unoccupancy state of a piece of furnitureis determined to have changed, automatically changing how the audiostream is rendered to cause the sweet spot to adapt according to thelocation and occupancy/unoccupancy state of the piece of furniture,wherein when a piece of furniture becomes occupied, the sweet spot isdynamically adapted to encompass the piece of furniture, and when apiece of furniture becomes unoccupied, the sweet spot is dynamicallyadapted to fit the remaining pieces of occupied furniture.
 7. A methodaccording to claim 6, wherein means for sensing provides a signal uponwhich the determining is based.
 8. A method according to claim 6,wherein the determining the pieces of furniture currently occupied isbased on location information about furniture.
 9. One or more computerreadable storage media storing information to enable a computing deviceto perform a process, the process comprising: in an environment having aplurality of pieces of furniture, automatically determining that objectsin the environment are pieces of furniture, automatically determininglocations of the pieces of furniture, and repeatedly automaticallydetermining which pieces of furniture are currently occupied and whichpieces are currently unoccupied; and rendering an audio stream to causea sweet spot of the rendered audio stream to dynamically adapt to fitthe locations of the pieces of furniture determined to be currentlyoccupied, and during the rendering, when an occupancy/unoccupancy stateof a piece of furniture is determined to have changed, automaticallychanging how the audio stream is rendered to cause the sweet spot toadapt according to the location and occupancy/unoccupancy state of thepiece of furniture, wherein when a piece of furniture becomes occupied,the sweet spot is dynamically adapted to encompass the piece offurniture, and when a piece of furniture becomes unoccupied, the sweetspot is dynamically adapted to fit the remaining pieces of occupiedfurniture.